1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a graphical user interface for searches.
2. Description of the Related Art
When a window is displayed on the display screen of the display unit of a personal computer, there are instances where a scroll bar is displayed along one edge of the window. If information such as images and text cannot all be displayed in the window, scrolling is performed by dragging a slider along the scroll bar so that information that could not be displayed in the window will be displayed in the window.
There are instances where such a scroll bar is utilized in an image database that displays images, which have been retrieved as the result of a search, in the form of a list of arrayed thumbnail images. Specifically, the scroll bar is provided with graduations and the scope of a search (which becomes a search condition) is specified in accordance with the position of the slider along the scroll bar.
Since the scroll bar is one-dimensional, the scope of a search can be changed by moving the scroll-bar slider but this does make it possible to alter the scale of the graduations. As a consequence, operability is poor. In order to change both, the search scope and scale of the graduations, two scroll bars are required. However, operability is not improved that much even if this expedient is adopted.